Daido Moriyama Captures the ‘True Reality of Life’

Daido Moriyama is a master of street photography, but the way he sees himself is a little more humble.

“When I have a project I am working on, I’ll basically leave my place before noon like a stray dog,” he says in his biographical film “Memories of Dog.” The Japanese photographer, now 75, likens his working method to that of an animal on the prowl, “circling like a stray dog or alley cat, or even sometimes like an insect. I’ll go from alley to alley, resurface and then enter another alley, and I just wander.”

Dressed in monochrome black, and looking exhausted, Mr. Moriyama spoke at a Friday forum during this year’s Art Taipei fair, which concluded today. Despite his age, he said he continues to wander the streets to capture the ”true reality of life,” especially in his preferred neighborhood of Shinjuku, home to Tokyo’s largest red-light district.

“I like the smell of desires, and Shinjuku is the gathering place of all desires,” he told the audience.

Art Taipei

Mr. Moriyama’s works on display at the fair.

Born in 1938, Mr. Moriyama grew up amid the upheavals of post-war Japan. Fascinated by society’s outcasts and underdogs, he has documented his country’s transformation through characters such as back-street boxers and gay prostitutes, all pictured in his signature black-and-white, grain-heavy style. One of his most iconic images is the 1971 “Stray Dog,” showing a street dog looking back at the photographer with menace.

At first glance, Mr. Moriyama’s snapshots may appear almost amateurish, with their haphazard focus, off-kilter angles and depictions of mundane subjects such as cars in motion and legs covered in fishnet stockings. “Anything can be sexy,” he said. “On the streets of Taipei, I even find the engines of the motorbikes very sexy.”

In his five-decade long career, he hasn’t shied away from provocation: a photograph in his first photo book, “Japan: A Photo Theater” (1968), depicted an aborted fetus at a Tokyo hospital.

“For me, a picture represents a moment of intimate conversation between the photographer and the person or object of what he is photographing,” he said. “A picture not only captures my personal emotions and thoughts, but also captures the memories of that place and scars that history has left there.”

Mr. Moriyama has been compared to the American-born French street photographer William Klein, a decade his senior, with whom he recently shared a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern. Yet he believes his journey to be different from that of his Western colleague, who has also dabbled in fashion, filmmaking and painting. Mr. Moriyama, the son of an insurance salesman, sees himself strictly as a street photographer, with no plans to change.

Though he now enjoys world-wide fame, his life as a photographer was not always smooth sailing. In 1972, his creativity and inspiration hit a dead end, leaving him with a sharp sense of despair — which served as the motivation for one of his most renowned series, “Farewell, Photography.”

Standing in front of images from the series, which had been brought to Art Taipei by Tokyo-based Taka Ishii Gallery, Mr. Moriyama explained that at that time, his frustration reached the point where he wanted to quit photography.

He wasn’t ready to go so fast, however.

“Before leaving it, I wanted to destroy it,” the photographer said. “But when I tried to destroy it, that’s when I realized I couldn’t live without it.”